Installing Aero Bars

Triathlon Forum
1

I’ve got a set of S bend aerobars on my tri bike but whether they are slightly more aero or not I’m really not a fan. I bought the profile design carbon stryke bars but my local bike shop wants like 50 bucks to install em. How hard is it to do it myself with the cable routing and everything… I’m not exactly Mr. Fix it but I figure if I would only cost me the bar tape it would be worth spending the time on it.

Any ideas or good links to show me how to do it? Pictures preferable… :slight_smile:

2

Not hard if you know how to use an allen wrench. Righty tighty, lefty loosey. Feed the cable through the extension, shove the wire through… whalla

3

The cables and housing are already sized for the current aerobars.

If your new ones won’t be any longer then it’s possible you can install them without recabling the bike. The bike shop may be planning for a recabling and if so, their price quote is very reasonable.

Do you have internal cable routing? (internal to the frame that is). If you do, it can be a tricky operation to pull out the inner cable and then get it back in. This is a step you need to perform to get the bar end shifters out of the old bars. If the end of your cable frayed any after it was cut to size then it won’t feed back through your housing either and will require you buy a new inner cable.

Here are the steps as I can picture it:

  1. remove derailleur cables by loosening the cable end at the derailleurs and pulling out from the end of the aero bars
  2. remove bar end shifters from aero bars
  3. remove aero bars from base bars (cable housings will come along)
  4. remove cable housings from old aerobars
  5. install new aerobars
  6. feed cable housings through new aerobars and ensure they are long enough
  7. install bar end shifters and match up to cable housing
  8. install inner cables (perhaps new ones) from levers back (this is what can be tricky if you had internal cable routing)
  9. tighten cables at derailleurs, adjust tension, retrim the derailleurs
  10. tape the new bar ends.
4

OTOH - when you are heading downhill at 40MPH it is nice to know all the bolts are torqued right.

I do almost all my own wrenching on my bikes - but I paid to have my recent bars installed because:
I wanted to duplicate my fit coordinatesI didn’t want to be the one ‘forcing’ the shifters into the bar extensionsI wanted the tape to look professional and not like the hack job my taping always does.I think it was money well spent.

.